Sony Online launches Bullet Run, a new F2P FPS

Sony Online announced yesterday that Bullet Run has completed open beta testing and is now officially live. For those unfamiliar with the game, it was developed by ACONY Games under the name Hedone before Sony acquired the publishing rights and had the game renamed Bullet Run. In Bullet Run, players fight other players on a reality TV show where performance is everything.

The players or “contestants” as the game calls them must show off their style and skills to the arenas. The better players do the more “fame” the players acquire which gives them the opportunity to unlock new weapons, mods, and cosmetic items. The Game currently features 6 different maps to choose from with promises of regular content updates.

Other interesting features include:

Eight Kill Skills – Unique abilities can be trained and unleashed during combat. Each brings in cutting-edge technology for players to use in their match and are unlocked as contestants earn Heat. These include damage heals, berserker mode, enemy-trapping robots, aerial ammo attacks, and the devastating mini-gun just to name a few.

Active Reload – When you hit ‘reload,’ a circular interface appears. If you hit it just right, your weapon loads much faster if you don’t hit the mark, your gun will jam.

In-depth Weapon Customization – Thousands of potential combinations per weapon from silencers and muzzle brakes to scopes, stocks and more. Additionally, weapons decals and paintjobs will provide that special touch that every killing machine needs.

38 Readers Commented

I dont get it, i have to repair my gun, and by the time i have a bit of credits again, it needs repairs AGAIN. you just play to repair the gun. Guess its best to grab the gun from your foe after every kill and hope he has repaired it ^^ Almost everything in the shop is overpriced and who in the right mind would pay real money for such crappy graphics and only a handfull of maps is beyond me.

The gameplay is solid, fastpaced, like a shooter should be. Bad ping can make some players very hard to hit :p At least they dont have noobtubes 😀 The taunting during the killcam is nice tho.

The commentary gets repetitive fast and the sound of every gun is the same.

I would give this game a 6/10 in the first cpl of days you play it, and 2/10 after the first week lol

I tried the game seeing I played the later version of hedone what puts me off is when I go to marketplace to buy a new gun you have to get game cash to buy a new gun making the game absoluteness not free to play at all its limited limited stuff you don’t get new weapons

Graphics:
First off I’d just like to say, i found it hilarious that in order to cover up the crappy character modeling from hedone, they put metal wristbands on the characters. In hedone the hands were so poorly attached to the bodies you could see the stumps where they connected. You can still see the same problem on the neck that sony tried to cover up by elongating where the chest connects to the head. Character customization is minimal, men are extremely bulky in the weirdest way (wide body skinny head), women are stereo-typically skinny.
On another note, on 1080p the edges of characters are still horribly rough, no AA options.

Gameplay:
Pretty much call of duty, get kills to get your special stuff, you won’t get much character customization without paying the subscription fees. Pay to Enjoy? There is no quick join by level and higher level characters will dominate lower level characters due to the amount of content they have access to. Almost no weapon balance, anybody with a shotgun can dominate close-medium range fights easily. Skills are equipped as a loadout then your points in match decide what range of them you have access to. After you unlock them they only have cooldowns regardless of what happens to your score, which is cool. I set my mouse sensitivity to 1/100 and still could do a complete 360 by moving my mouse just an inch so it was frustrating for me to play. On some of the battlefields randomly holograms appear and dance on the edges of the field. The cameras that the crowd watch you through are the same drone that you can pilot, gets frustrating.

Sound:
BAD. Announces sound like they just found someone who worked in their office and could do a deep voice and then just one other random guy. They also only have like 5 different sayings, gets old really quickly. The only positive I found was the sounds of weapons off in the distance were entrancingly ambient.

Finally, there is a plothole and its the fact that in hedone, lazar is the announcer and it’s his game, the new sony method completely eliminated that concept and the name lazar is still everywhere, which is imo both lazy and pointless work, considering the fact that that content already existed anyway and they went through the effort to remove it, mostly likely because they didn’t want to have to expand on any story.

So uhh… if you like CoD, don’t care about graphics or story and don’t mind paying for a subscription, i guess this game’s for you.

Not to mention, if you’ve played Hedone closed beta, which was in the winter, you can easily see that they didn’t add ONE new thing. Only 2 game modes? And the fact they think this game was so ready, that it should have skipped open beta just amazes me. I don’t blame the developers completely though, the player base is so clueless they cant see the bucketloads of problems. I suggest skipping this game completely, it had good potential when it was in closed beta, but seeing it now, I can tell you for a fact that it’s GARBAGE. 3/10.

what they don’t tell you is that you can’t repair your gun to max and every game after the max you can repair it drops as well.( i.e. you repair your gun it goes to 99. The next time you repair your gun you can only repair it to 98 and it drops 1 every time you repair.) this is why i stopped playing the game everything is overpriced and you make nowhere near enough money to get anything you want. Thank you SOE for making a another P2W game.

The game used to be called Parabellum. Back then it was good and then it got shut down and released around a year later under the name Hedone. Sony has just re-leased an old game and they have broken it after 1 day.

I would actually respect your opinion if the game has been re-launched for a while but………………
Fill in those dots for me and lets just wait an see how it does, maybe they got it right this time and i’m interested in the game so far.

I do hope they got it right this time. But I’ve been in beta and it wasn’t so impressive. On the other hand Warface is becoming quite a decent game that has good chances to outdo all the generic free to play shooters. It is not perfect (yet?), but even now Bullet Run isn’t better in any aspect. I’d say it isn’t even close to Warface in any aspect…

There are also Arctic Combat and Blacklight Retribution to deal with. Planetside 2 and Tribes Ascend I don’t even want to mention. At best this game is going to have a hard time competing with those. It might not die, but I doubt that it’s going to be successfull.

I have to agree with Curst. I’ve been in the beta for a LONG time now, back when it was hedone/parabellum sequel. The game doesn’t have any meat to it. I feel no reason to play it for more than 10 minutes. It was a really neat idea though. I just wished they fleshed it out more and made touched up the combat mechanics. Some of the guns have mega crazy spread, and others when you shoot, it doesn’t give that feel like your shooting a gun. They feel more like airsoft rifles.
And the worst thing, it takes too long to get any ingame $$$ to buy anything.

There are too many other great games out now/in the future for me to care about this title anymore.

“And the worst thing, it takes too long to get any ingame $$$ to buy anything.”

Yes and that is made even worse now that they made the credit booster for cash shop only. During beta when you could get it for in game cash it wasn’t so bad. Also the fact that you have to repair your guns, which I don’t mind terribly, except that they made it WAYYYY too expensive.

Sony didn’t make this game they just published it. That’s all.
Originally the game was titled Hedone and it was in beta for what felt like over a year. Then Sony picked it up, opened a closed beta for it and a month or two later released the game.

Basically the more points you gain in a match thru kills, assists, objectives, etc. help you unlock certain skills such as healing injections, turrets, and mortars.
Each player has 4 tiered skill slots, so the heal (tier 1) unlocks a lot faster than the gatling gun (tier 4).
It isn’t exactly a “killstreak” system in the sense that you don’t need to get a kill streak to unlock them, you can die in between, but yeah getting a killstreak gets you more points so you will unlock those skills faster that way. In general your progress gets saved but there are certain penalties that can occur such as if you get killed by your match nemesis.
As you level up you can also purchase upgrades for your skills so your injections will heal for more, turrets will do more damage, etc.

Yeah kinda, just two major differences. First you can access the skills anywhere you don’t have to run to a depot on the map.
Second, the CP system has a pool of points so if you have 800 points and purchase the 800 point flamethrower you can’t get anything else. In Bullet Run each skill unlocks individually, so if your heal is 100 points and your turret is 300 points, when you get 300 points you can use a turret AND you could have used your heal 3 times (btw they don’t stack up so once you use the skill you need to unlock another 100 pts to use again).

I am currently playing Russian version of Warface. The Crytek3 FPS. It is pretty good. Of course all game files are ENGLISH and the language pak is Russian catering to that market. There is no IP ban for me in EU, fr. I have installed an english pak but it got outdated last update. No worries as I memoriwed the menus. The game is pretty cool but has several flaws. IF you review it, look out for cool buddy assist to climb walls but note it replaces LADDERS as you can only do it where a ladder is plaed and no where else, rendering it useless.
Classes are used, but they have a difficult time in balancing class action with FPS twitch fans leaving allot of class skills a little useless including ZERO class skills skills for sniper. Biazzare use of engineer, including an armor repair skill that NO one uses. And sadly maps HORRIBLY designed for a sniper class, rendering them a battle sniper, but you start off with semi auto sniper rifle so meh.
The graphics are awesome. There is a slide feature. But the slide knife 1 shot kill sometimes sneaks in and I have to say the game feels SUPER close to AVA, with the 1 exception it is less twitch and offers better graphics, but BARELY better.
See ya there!
-Nanbo – Cacalips – ???